Both boys started as an enormous crocodile scuttled into the water from a nearby sand bar.
“Whew! I didn’t even see him till he moved!” Bud gulped.
As the canoes penetrated into the forest, the trees became larger and taller, thrusting two hundred feet and more into the air. The arching canopy shrouded the jungle in greenish gloom.
Many of the trees were buttressed with roots spreading outward, high above the ground. Flowering lianas and vines hung in loops and festoons from the branches.
Below was a dense tangle of head-high vegetation, much of it with leaves of reddish and purplish hues.
“Those plants never get direct sunshine,” Creel explained, “so the red-purple colors enable them
62 REPELATRON SKYWAY
to benefit from the sunlight that isn’t absorbed by the green leaves higher up.”
Chow grunted. “I may turn reddish purple myself ‘fore I get out o’ this here jungle steam bath!” he muttered, mopping his brow.
Reeds and water weed gradually slowed the strokes of the paddlers. At last the river made a sharp bend, becoming little more than a swampy marsh. Here the canoes were unloaded.
After a brief lunch the porters shouldered their loads, and the party struck eastward into the forest. The trail hacked out by Burlow’s survey teams was still visible, though the jungle growth was rapidly obliterating it.
Tom studied the terrain with growing respect. “Now we know what those guys were up against.”
A short distance later the trekkers found their way blocked by a rampaging column of black driver ants which swarmed across the trail.
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